Website builders started as a B2C phenomenon, aiming to unlock the ability for website owners to be able to make changes without knowing how to code. More recently their availability and capabilities have expanded, and their access extended to B2B solutions in certain cases as well.
Zoey was early to the space, having launched its Visual Design Editor back in 2014, and having launched successive generations since. With our focusing in on the wholesale and B2B space, we’re one of the few B2B solutions that offer this option today.
Benefits of Leveraging Website Builders
Website builders aren’t for everyone, but they can benefit many.
In the B2B space, they can be particularly valuable when most of the time the main focus is on the ability to buy quickly and easily. As such, less emphasis is put on fancy design elements, instead focusing on either simple websites or an order portal experience which puts completing orders front and center.
For those companies, Ecommerce website development around builders can make a lot more sense. These options are more cost effective, allow you to get live quickly, and make most of the work quite easy thanks to drag-and-drop capabilities.
The end product will still look good, because these objects are designed with that in mind, but the core goal is leveraging the features you need to expose for sales to take place effectively.
Key Website Builder Features
Most website builders have a core set of features that make them easy to leverage out of the box, as well as to customize:
- Branding capabilities: Set your fonts and colors to match your overall brand look and feel
- Starter templates: You can pick from a selection of clean, crisp themes that can give you a major leg up to getting your site live.
- Building blocks: The core functionality can be dragged into various pages to arrange any marketing assets, core functionality and additional bells and whistles in the order and look you’d prefer.
- What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG): Website builders give you a good idea of how the final product will look, because it shows you visually how it will all come together as you build out your site.
- Desktop, tablet and mobile views: Check and manage each view in turn through the ability to select which device you wish to tweak.
When a Website Builder Isn’t the Right Approach
Some brands need very specific branding implementations, looks and feels, or custom features that don’t come out of a box with a website builder. Some need very specific custom code to be implemented above/beyond what a website builder can support.
At a certain point, projects with certain levels of customization can fall outside the scope of a website builder, or can be more effectively done with building an ecommerce website from scratch through an open source solution or custom code.
However, keep in mind that building in this format can be more expensive, not just upfront but in terms of maintenance, over SaaS solutions with website builders. It’s important to evaluate whether that additional cost will provide the value it will need to vs. the more cost effective options.
Zoey Strikes a Careful Balance
At Zoey, we know that functionality is important, so we’ve built the most feature-rich solution for wholesalers, distributors and brands to sell online. At the same time, we make it accessible to less technical people, with a wide array of controls, including through our Visual Design Editor.
We’ve always believed that our customers should be able to make simple, day-to-day changes to their website without calling a developer, and so our Visual Design Editor offers just that approach.
Our approach has drawn attention over the years, such as in this Entrepreneur article which discusses how site builders, like Zoey’s Visual Design Editor, can speed up the process.
Zoey founder Uri Foox was quoted heavily in the article, which discusses some of the Ecommerce trends around DIY websites that are becoming commonplace. One major trend is the B2B/wholesale trends following the lead of B2C sites:
“The next big wave of growth for ecommerce is in the B2B market, and in order to take advantage of it, companies need to adopt DIY website capabilities,” says Foox.
To speak to the Zoey team on how you can use our Visual Design Editor to get a B2B or wholesale site up and running quickly, contact us using the button below to initiate a conversation:
